So fancy, in fact, they are offering a five-course tasting menu, complete with beer pairings.

Brewers often talk about how beer is food-friendly, but it seems like few chefs are actually making dishes to go with a specific beer. Until now. And the pairings at Brewer’s Table are mind-blowing. In every course, the beer brought out aspects of the dish and vice versa.

If you don’t want to order a tasting (which costs $75 per person, including beer, and requires whole-table participation), the servers are well trained in which beers work with which courses, so you can hop and skip all over the menu.

The tasting is great for a date, though, when you don’t want to think too hard about anything except the person across the table from you.

Here’s a rundown of what we tried, course by course:

The first plate might have been our favorite. Maybe that was because neither my husband nor I is huge a fan of Surly’s Furious — it’s just too hoppy for our palates. So when we were served 4 ounces of it with a taco, we were skeptical.

But we were won over with the first bite and sip. Tender, flavorful, rich veal tongue; smoked potato; and a fantastic salsa wrapped in a delicate, perfectly chewy, thin disc of house-made naan were absolutely enhanced by the citrusy edge of the beer. The beer lost some of its bitterness in the earthiness of the dish, too, which made us like it.

Course two: Bold marlin crudo topped with such inventive touches as serrano ash and tangerine powder danced nicely with Fiery Hell, the brewery’s spiced-up German lager. The dish and the beer both got spicier as we chewed and sipped.

Course three: Sweet ricotta gnocchi, funky corn smut and velvety chanterelles were the perfect partner for Surly’s Dampfbier, which might be our favorite summer beer. The “steam beer” is fermented warm with a wheat yeast, which gives it hints of ripe fruit and bread.

The last savory course was appropriately rich and deeply flavored, and so was the beer. Smoky, fatty pork jowl, presented with a multitude of flavors and textures — including a silky bean puree, chewy farro and a hazelnut vinaigrette, to name a few. And Surly’s Smoke, a mellow, raisiny, black lager with a hint of smoke, was the perfect thing to cut through and enhance the rich flavors of the dish.

An overly fussy dessert was the only course that was a bit of a letdown. The Surly Cynic mousse at the center of the plate was delicious, but overpowered and oddly paired with a flavorless pistachio cake, a chewy sesame cracker, some kind of sauce, bits of strawberry, a rhubarb ice cream, a long string of rhubarb and … just describing all the components is exhausting. It was paired with Cynic, which made sense, and we did appreciate that the dessert was not super sweet.

Over all, Brewer’s Table is fantastic. We’re big fans of the brewery and of Guzman, and we’ll go back often to eat there and in the main beer hall. And drink beer, of course.

Jess Fleming has been with the Pioneer Press since 1999, and has been covering the Eat beat since 2012. She is an adventurous eater, cook and gardener, but will only grow something she can eat. She is a graduate of the journalism school at the University of Minnesota and a native of Eastern Wisconsin, where she grew up eating good brats, good cheese and fresh vegetables from her dad’s garden.

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